Friday, 16 March 2018

It is now over twenty years
since I last applied for a job,
and tried to make the process
of applying for jobs work for me.

After that I became so openly depressed
that I had to be excused being further pressed
into ever assuming that I might be wanted.

In that last application where I was meant
to 'sell myself' by recounting my best points
I addressed the employer and said to them;
'Naturally you will have more applicants
for the posts than you will have posts.
So if you want to reject me early on
in selecting who you want to accept,
then do-with my open consent.'.

I got a response from the employer,
the first I had got from any employer
'If you didn't want the job
then why did you apply for it?'.

It was the first proof I had in a decade
that employers read my applications,
and of course in trying to show them
some basic courtesy what I got back
meant in code 'Why are not more rude,
dishonest and aggressive? That is how we
have to be towards our competitors
and each other-without being seen to be so'.

Wednesday, 14 March 2018

With the advent of mass digital media
coming at us, from us, and from all sides,
we are warned to be very careful
about where we get our news from,
lest the presentation be tainted
with bias or foreign money/power.

But such warnings were much rarer
when the media was so analogue
that nobody needed to call it that.

I remember the small grubby emporia
in which the underground press used to appear,
the anarchist book shops full of books
that were more-left-wing-than-Left-Wing-Politics.
The sort of read where where the ink
came off on my fingers as I read
of squatting, of angry feminism,
of drugs I could never find - much less take,
and other fantastical narratives
I was never ever going to live out
.
Many of these stories lit up my life.
These texts became the pin-pricks
with which I tried to deflate
a very dull every-day reality
from which I wanted to escape,
and each text worked, for a while.

Those books never came with warnings,
the censors never knew where to look.

Monday, 12 March 2018

Management is the art of faking sincerity
with those higher up the chain of command
who are dependent on them for their wealth
while those below require management skills
to serve them and to keep them from penury.

In both their neediness
makes seeing what is lacking
after the management have acted
a dangerous insight.